Are These the 10 Best Cities to Open a Restaurant In?

For many people, owning a restaurant is a dream on their bucket list. The endless hours, deep financial investment and potential of failure are what keep many people from actually opening one.

But if you must open a restaurant, the people at financial site NerdWallet are here to help. On their blog, they’ve compiled a list of the best cities to start a restaurant in. Their team looked at 530 US cities with a population of over 50,000 people and then “used U.S. Census Bureau data to calculate the score for each location based on demand for new restaurants and local economic conditions that could affect the success of those restaurants.” They looked at things like population growth, median annual incomes, the number of new restaurants that have opened recently… Basically, they did more research for a blog post than you were planning on doing before opening your actual business.

Overall, based on their strictly statistical evidence, NerdWallet determined the best chance for getting into the restaurant game comes in areas with a growing population, especially in the suburbs.

Their top ten were:

Cedar Park, Texas

Mission, Texas

Franklin, Tennessee

Smyrna, Georgia

Round Rock, Texas

Frisco, Texas

Alpharetta, Georgia

Fishers, Indiana

Milpitas, California

Southaven, Mississippi

Not a big fan of any of those cities that, let’s be honest, most of us would have trouble locating on a map? Luckily, NerdWallet has listed the complete data for all 530 cities on their website if you want to dig a little deeper.

Of course, there’s more to opening a restaurant than just finding the right city. You also have to have an awesome name! What do you mean both Spaghetti Factory and Spaghetti Warehouse are already taken?